What nurses do as routine, is special in the time of COVID-19

Nurses make up the largest workforce within health care in the UK. Health and care systems locally, nationally and internationally are going through unprecedented upheaval in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, labouring under the volume of patients and struggling with a lack of essential resources.

Nurses are among the first people present to provide care during periods of crisis. It was nurses who led the response to AIDS in the early 1980s, the Ebola outbreaks, measles epidemics, polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, meningitis and the public health challenges that they all bring and COVID-19 is no different. Nurses have led and are leading the COVID-19 response globally.

Now, the public are becoming much more aware of the role of the nurse as result of the pandemic however, much of that work is not that much of a departure from what it is that nurses do in ‘normal’ times. The job nurses are doing right now is not really any different than the practice they were doing all of the time, it is the intensity of need that is different. Nurses are leading in ways that are remarkably similar to their usual work, during a crisis however, their visibility and a recognition of that work is heightened.